Tag: europe

The West’s Era Of Dominance Is Over, “Europe’s Decline Is Undeniable”

Only a few years ago, most of Western Europe seemed like a fortress of stability in international politics. With robust economies, solid social systems, and the grand edifice of “European integration,” it gave an impression of permanence, impervious even to major geopolitical upheavals.

Now, however, it has become an inexhaustible source of peculiar headlines and confusion.

We see endless talk of sending “European peacekeepers” to Ukraine, drawn-out dramas over forming a government in France, or pre-election storms in a teacup in Germany. There are attempts to meddle in the Middle East, and above all, a deluge of irresponsible, often meaningless statements from Western European politicians. For outsiders, these developments provoke a mix of bemusement and concern.

In Russia, the Western side of our shared continent’s apparent decline is met with suspicion but also a certain sadness. For centuries, Western Europe has been both an existential threat and a source of inspiration for Russia. Peter the Great famously reformed the country to borrow the best from European thoughts and culture. In the 20th century, the Soviet Union, despite great sacrifices, secured victory over Nazi Germany during World War II. And for many Russians, Western Europe has long been an “Eden,” offering respite from what were often harsh realities back home.

But a Western Europe that is economically unstable, politically chaotic, and intellectually stagnant is no longer the same as what once inspired reforms or envy. It’s no longer a place Russia can look to as a neighbor worth emulating or even fearing.

How the rest of the world sees ‘Europe’

For most of the world, Western Europe’s problems provoke only curiosity. Major powers like China and India are happy to trade with its various countries and benefit from its technology and investment. But if Western Europe were to disappear from the global stage tomorrow, it wouldn’t disrupt their plans for the future. These nations are vast civilizations in their own right, historically shaped far more by internal dynamics than by European influence.

Meanwhile, African and Arab nations still view Western Europe through the lens of colonialism. For them, its decline is of material interest but little emotional consequence. Türkiye sees European countries as prey, aging and weakened rivals. Even the United States, a supposed ally, approaches the continent’s crises with a businesslike detachment, focused solely on how to maximize its own interests at Europe’s expense.

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Humans originated in Europe, not Africa, according to fossil discovery

A recent discovery in Türkiye is shaking up our understanding of human evolution. Scientists have identified a new fossil ape, Anadoluvius turkae, from an 8.7-million-year-old site near Çankırı.

This find challenges the long-held belief that human ancestors evolved solely in Africa, suggesting instead that Europe played a significant role in our evolutionary history.

The fossil, uncovered at the Çorakyerler site with support from Türkiye’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, reveals that Mediterranean fossil apes were more diverse than previously thought.

These apes are part of the earliest known group of hominins, which includes not only African apes like chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas but also humans and their fossil ancestors.

Out of Africa? Maybe not

This discovery adds weight to the theory that the ancestors of African apes and humans may have evolved in Europe before migrating to Africa between nine and seven million years ago.

Professor David Begun from the University of Toronto and Professor Ayla Sevim Erol from Ankara University led the international team of researchers who conducted the study.

“Our findings further suggest that hominines not only evolved in western and central Europe but spent over five million years evolving there and spreading to the eastern Mediterranean before eventually dispersing into Africa, probably as a consequence of changing environments and diminishing forests,” explained Professor Begun.

“The members of this radiation to which Anadoluvius turkae belongs are currently only identified in Europe and Anatolia.”

Partial skull of Anadoluvius turkae

The conclusion drawn from the study is based on the analysis of a well-preserved partial cranium discovered in 2015.

This fossil includes most of the facial structure and the front part of the braincase, providing valuable insights into the ape’s anatomy.

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The Enigmatic Origins of Cro Magnon: Europe’s First Humans

Cro Magnon Man, a robust and powerful hominid of the Upper Paleolithic era, emerges from the shadows of prehistory, leaving behind skeletal remains primarily found in southern France. Classified as Homo sapiens, these ancient beings bear striking anatomical similarities to modern Europeans, West Asians, and North Africans, yet with notable distinctions. Their weaponry, including spears, harpoons, and bows, hints at their prowess as hunters and toolmakers.

Unlike their Neanderthal contemporaries, Cro Magnons exhibit straight foreheads and short, wide faces akin to modern humans. Their larger brains and powerful physiques suggest a species adapted for survival in the harsh landscapes of ancient Europe.

Discoveries in caves like Cromagnon Rock Shelter reveal not just physical traits but also insights into their lifestyles. Evidence of injuries and traumas underscores the challenges they faced, living a physically demanding existence.

Recent archaeological findings challenge long-held beliefs about human evolution. The discovery of ancient stone tools in the Middle East suggests that anatomically modern humans inhabited the region much earlier than previously thought, reshaping our understanding of the relationship between Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens.

Skull comparisons, meticulous measurements, and genetic analyses offer tantalizing clues about the origins and migrations of our ancestors. The Hofmeyr skull, dated to over 36,000 years old and discovered in South Africa, challenges conventional theories by revealing unexpected affinities with European Cro Magnon specimens.

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European Parliament Approves Controversial Migration Pact; Furious Nationalists Vow To Bring It Down After EU Elections

The European Parliament has approved the controversial EU Asylum and Migration Pact, which will see countries forced to accept their fair share of new arrivals into the bloc or pay a fine for every migrant they reject.

The new asylum and migration package was passed largely with votes from lawmakers affiliated with the European People’s Party, the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), and Renew Europe, with MEPs being urged to swallow their criticisms of the scheme and vote for the compromise legislation.

“History made,” tweeted European Parliament President Roberta Metsola as she praised what she described as a “robust legislative framework on how to deal with migration and asylum,” noting it had been “10 years in the making” but the EU had kept its word.

Some MEPs on both the left and the center-right revealed they voted through the pact despite its many flaws.

“The new legislation is not perfect but we can only make migration manageable and humane with one European solution,” said Hilde Vautmans, foreign affairs coordinator for Renew Europe.

Nationalist politicians across Europe expressed their anger at the passing of the pact, which they claim cedes sovereignty to an ever-centralized European Union.

“The Migration Pact organizes the tutelage and control of nations, the legal impunity of NGOs complicit with smugglers,” tweeted Marine Le Pen of France’s National Rally.

She further vowed to “put an end to the accelerated pursuit of policies to encourage and organize mass immigration,” on June 9 at the EU elections in which her party is expected to win the most French seats.

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Why are so many Children Dying Suddenly all across Europe?

Data quietly published by a host of countries across Europe reveals that excess deaths among children are still occurring at an alarming rate as we enter the spring of 2024.

The deaths cannot be blamed on COVID-19 because the data has proven the alleged virus and disease rarely harms children, if at all.

And the terrible trend only began when the European Medicines Agency extended Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) of the COVID-19 vaccines to children in the middle of Spring of 2021.

Before this. excess deaths among children among children were in negative figures. With the year 2020, the height of the alleged pandemic, seeing 726 fewer deaths than expected among children aged 0 to 14 in a host of countries across Europe, including the UK, Germany, Spain, France, Italy etc. according to EuroMOMO.

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Investigation of Tomb Burial Reveals Sick Neolithic Ritual Sacrifices

Recent research has unearthed chilling evidence of ritual sacrifices in Neolithic Europe, a practice that involved the gruesome method of “incaprettamento” – tying victims’ necks to their bent legs, leading to self-strangulation. This study, spearheaded by biological anthropologist Eric Crubézy of Paul Sabatier University and forensic pathologist Bertrand Ludes, has revealed more than a dozen instances of this sacrificial method across Europe, dating from 5400 to 3500 BC. The findings, published in the journal Science Advances, provide a macabre insight into ancient sacrificial practices tied to agricultural rituals.

The original discovery at Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux near Avignon, France, served as a catalyst for this broader investigation. Initially found over two decades ago, this tomb housed the remains of three women buried around 5500 BC, with two of them now believed to have been victims of sacrificial murder via incaprettamento.

The site, which mirrored a grain silo and was adorned with agricultural symbols, suggests a ritualistic sacrifice deeply rooted in agricultural practices. The alignment of a wooden structure above the tomb with the solstices and the presence of grain-grinding stones nearby further underscore the ritual’s ties to farming and the cycles of nature.

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HOMO SAPIENS ARRIVING IN NORTHERN EUROPE OVER 45,000 YEARS AGO ENCOUNTERED THIS ENIGMATIC HUMAN SPECIES

A genetic analysis of bones found in Northern Europe shows that anatomically modern humans, aka Homo sapiens, first arrived in the area when it was already home to another enigmatic human species, Homo neanderthalensis.

Although advances in genetic analysis had already shown that early Europeans engaged and interbred with Neanderthals, the latest findings show that those first encounters took place during much earlier times before the extinction of this ancient offshoot of humanity.

BONE FRAGMENTS OF HOMO SAPIENS DATED FROM 47,500 TO 45,000 YEARS AGO

Performed by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and supported by the Max Planck Society, the new analysis involved numerous bone fragments collected at the Ilsenhöhle cave site near Ranis, Germany. Previous excavations at the site had revealed finely-flaked, leaf-shaped stone tools, placing it among the oldest known sites of Stone Age human culture in north-central and northwestern Europe.

According to a press release announcing the findings, “the stone blades at Ranis, referred to as leaf points, are similar to stone tools found at several sites in Moravia, Poland, Germany, and the United Kingdom. These tools are thought to have been produced by the same culture referred to as the Lincombian–Ranisian–Jerzmanowician (LRJ) culture or technocomplex.”

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Farmergeddon SPREADS across Europe! Militants block motorways in France, Germany and Belgium with tractors and vow to cut off Paris entirely amid bitter pay row

Major European cities in Paris, Germany and Belgium were placed under siege by militant farmers across the continent tonight. 

Armoured cars and 5,000 extra police surrounded Paris on Monday as a ‘quasi-military’ blockade swung into action, while police in Hamburg, Germany, were called out to deal with farmers who have been protesting Chancellor Olaf Scholz‘s decision to cut subsidies. 

Over in Belgium, a minister was forced to evacuate the site of a protest on a major highway in the Walloon region. 

As night fell, some 1500 tractors were in place at six major junctions entering Paris, while agriculture workers called for more protection against rising costs, and for an end to the EU’s green net zero policies.

Protesting farmers started the operation by blocking the A13 highway to the west of the capital, the A4 to the east and the A6 on which hundreds of tractors rolled towards Paris from the south.

By midafternoon they appeared to have met their objective of establishing eight chokepoints on major roads into Paris, according to Sytadin, a traffic monitoring service.

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Why Is The West’s Mainstream Media Ignoring Europe’s Farmers’ Revolt?

Although the global media used all its weapons of opinion to make the “peasant war” that shook Germany seem nonexistent, the world was still treated to dramatic images of the mass farmers’ demonstrations through the new era of social media.

“No fuel, no food, no future” — that is the slogan most often used by German farmers, obviously in English because it was the only way to get mass exposure of their current plight.

However, you’d be forgiven for missing the protests raging across Germany — and in many other countries this past week, including Romania and France — due to the mainstream media’s apparent disinterest in the farming revolution, with producers seemingly given particularly strict instructions on what to, and what not to report.

The existence of protests unfolding throughout Europe appeared to be under some form of media embargo. Perhaps it might be worth considering why.

It is true in general, but in post-WWII Europe in particular, which was in a rather dire situation, it has proven true many times over that food supply is perhaps an even more delicate and important strategic sector than heavy industry. Although in macro statistics, which give a false picture, agriculture’s share could be only a few percent, or even “negligible,” it is not only not negligible, but it turns out to be more important than anything imaginable.

The great peasant wars of the 15th and 16th centuries were fought for exactly the same reasons as today. In that century and a half, in addition to literally “pulling the rug out from under the peasantry,” the average peasant’s daily working hours doubled, and the income he received for those hours was cut in half. It is understandable (though not excusable) that the brutal cruelty of the somewhat frustrated peasant masses knew no bounds. Nor, indeed, did the reprisals that followed.

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Archaeologists Keep Finding Evidence of a Mysterious Ancient Cult In Europe

Gilded belt buckles discovered across Europe have revealed a previously-unknown ancient fertility cult with ties across the continent, researchers believe.

Four bronze belt ends depicting a snake devouring a frog—thought to be a symbol of creation and/or fertility—were recently discovered in Moravia, Bohemia, Bavaria, and Hungary. Because of their near-identical shape and make, archaeologists now believe that these belt ends are evidence of an unknown pagan cult with far-reaching and diverse populations across Europe in the early Middle Ages.

“When the belt with the motif of a snake devouring a frog was discovered with the help of metal detectors at the site near Břeclav in southern Moravia, we thought it was a rare find with a unique decoration,” said lead researcher Jiří Macháček in a news release. 

“However, we later found that other nearly identical artifacts were also unearthed in Germany, Hungary and Bohemia. I realized that we were looking at a previously unknown pagan cult that linked different regions of central Europe,” the head of the Department of Archaeology and Museology at the Masaryk University Faculty of Arts said.

Macháček’s team conducted a thorough series of analyses to learn more about the buckles and their provenance, which they reported in the Journal of Archaeological Science. 

Their work involved making high-tech scans and conducting a lead isotope analysis of the buckles to determine their composition, as well as three-dimensional scans to see how closely-related the four buckles really were to one another.

According to the analysis, not only were most of the buckles made from the same wax cast, but the copper used to make them came from the same metal ore in the Slovak Ore Mountains—one of the main suppliers for this material in Europe during the seventh and eighth centuries. The 3D models suggest that the buckles came from the same workshop. 

Because of how widespread and similar the fittings are, the authors believe the belts were a way to communicate between classes and peoples. This theory upends a previously-held idea that this style of belt was only used by elites  within the Avar ethnic group—a powerful group of people who conquered southeast central Europe in the sixth century and whose empire lasted some 200 years. 

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